Brandon Wang

I’ve been featured in the .Net Awards

I’m very proud to say that I have been featured in .Net Magazine Awards 2011, having made it to the shortlist for Young Designer of the Year. Needless to say, I’m more than honored to have been chosen for the shortlist.

If you have not yet voted for me yet, please help me out. As a reminder, I am one of the youngest people on the shortlist for Young Designer, at age 14, and winning this would be such a big honor to me. I truly appreciate every vote.

The voting page does not include any information on the young designers on the list, beyond their name and website. The .Net Magazine profiled all the young designers on their website, including me and other talented individuals. Please take a look; it will help you in making an informed vote (regardless of who you vote for).

Finally, you can follow me on Twitter to hear my ramblings and comments about life and design.

Trying something new

After deciding that the old design was growing a bit too much on me, I redesigned my website to reflect my personality and style a bit better. It’s not perfect, I know that, but I like where it’s headed with this design.

One of the big changes I’ve made is the migration from brwang.com to brwang.com. The new one is a lot shorter, and it’s also a .com, which takes away some confusion. The biggest disadvantage is that while it is very short, it’s also a bit confusing compared to the previous one – “BrWang” is not as clear as “Brandon Wang” is. Nonetheless, I think I’ll survive.

Another one of my favorite new features is the status board on the Contact page. The new status board features my status and availability. It’s also dynamically updating, which is the best part. Awesome level to the max!

Please let me know how the new site looks and functions. Thanks. ~Brandon

Silent Noise 1.0.3: Throwing it out to the world

Silent Noise 1.0.3 (initial release) is a free WordPress theme I hope will pack a punch to the WordPress community – with some revolutionary ideas I’ve thrown out there, I hope it won’t be another one of the pack. Screenshots, download, and more are now available.

I should start by saying that this is a beta release – I’m pretty sure most of the problems have been solved but I’m not entirely positive, so I’m “throwing it into the world”. Rest assured, Silent Noise should run flawlessly.

If there are problems, however, please let me know via my Contact page, email, Twitter, or some other means. I really appreciate it. Thanks!

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Stunning Silence 1.2.7 Released + Musings

Version 1.2.7 of my popular Stunning Silence WordPress theme has been released. This update packs a few changes that will help you with your blog, including functionality to integrate with WordPress 3.0’s new Menu feature, as well as a few aesthetic changes.

This version also marks an important moment: WordPress theme servers indicate over ten thousand users have downloaded my theme. I’m immensely proud of this number as it marks the WordPress community’s trust in me, as well as a testament to my skill. I never, in my wildest imaginations, ever imagined Stunning Silence would be this popular.

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The Ode to User Interfaces

I recently visited a university campus that was absolutely captivating. I really loved the architecture, the school grounds, even the placement of the buildings. I found it beautiful how all of the classrooms were all automated and the professor could – with a touch of his finger – turn off the lights or deploy the projector screen, all through a touch screen built into his desk.

There was one thing I didn’t like, however: the staircases. Rather, not the staircases themselves, but the signs posted inside of them. For all the marvel and grandeur of design everything else was, the signs that indicated what floor a person was on were created remarkably without thought. It completely killed the experience.

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I’ve been working on some things

(Look for this to come out soon. Trust me – it’s going to be awesome.)

HTML5 & Flash: This is innovation at its best

If you’ve had the opportunity to follow the debates on Flash vs. HTML5 (Canvas, etc), you might agree with me on how incredibly articulated the arguments are. People speak out on everything – whether Flash should be preserved, whether Canvas should rule – and I’m very happy about it.

Innovation at its best is discussion. Discussion on how to make it better, discussion on how to improve it, discussions in general tend to be a good thing. It means that people are talking, and most of the time, when people talk, problems get solved.

As a by-stander, it’s very hard to argue about the argument, because it’s going to be better in the long run – the web is going to be better. How we come about achieving that “better”, however, is a different story. Both involve standardizing something, whether it’s Flash or Canvas – HTML5 just happens to be built into the browser.

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Culrr: a color picker by Brandon Wang

Colors are such a crucial part of any design piece, and what I’ve often found is that the selection of such colors play a very important part. Therefore, it makes sense to have a very good color picker.

Harnessing the power of Steven Witten’s Farbtastic (the actual color picker you see) and then some of my own code, I’ve created culrr, which lets you see the color you’ve chosen on a very large scale.

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Affyn (Previously Affinity) Released: Version 0.9 [Updated With Download Link]

Affyn’s been released! Previously Affinity, this theme has gone a name change after an unfortunate naming collision. Affyn is a free WordPress theme with a clean yet grunge design, a modular form of widget layout that allows for mason-like layout in the footer, and other great features that make it a great WordPress theme.

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Stunning Silence 1.2.6 Released

After many confused users questioning my decision to default the Cufon headers to on, I have decided to push an update changing this default setting to off. I’ve also modified a few things because I didn’t find them appealing. A list of what’s changed is below.

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Affinity is Almost Here: More Info

Working late the night before Thanksgiving, I wanted to release Affinity on Thanksgiving Day. It featured grunge touches without losing its elegance, focusing all the attention on your content. But it’s not here.

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4 Ways to Learn Anything (Including Web Design)

How did you learn web design? For years, I’ve been asked this question. After being featured on Lifehacker, I’ve received an influx of these questions.

I have developed an unspoken method of learning that has helped me learn six programming languages and hundreds of applications like InDesign or Photoshop.

With these tips, you should be able to learn anything. Most are programming-focused, but you should find that they work with many things in life. In addition, you’ll be able to gain knowledge quickly and with results.

Without further ado, I present my methods.

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